The 26-year-old qualified second in this morning’s 20 minute session, just 0.02s behind Craig Lowndes, before scoring second and third place finishes in Races 16 and 17 of the championship respectively.

Driving on Stone Brothers Racing’s home ground at Queensland Raceway, Slade said the performance was no surprise.

“It’s been a dream come true really,” said Slade.

“Me and all of my guys feel that it’s been a long time coming.

“The majority of this year we’ve had quite good speed, but the luck hasn’t quite gone our way a few times, and I guess I’ve made a couple of mistakes as well, which is all part of the learning process.

“In Townsville we had a really good run there on the Sunday, and in Darwin we were fast as well.

“We had a really good test before this weekend and we were quitely confident that if we were going to do it then this was the place that we were going to do it at.

“It’s funny – you just take it in your stride a bit and it’ll take until tonight to really sink in.”

Asked to elaborate further on the reasons for his impressive turn of speed, the third-year driver pointed to his extensive experience of the Ipswich circuit.

“Being a young guy stepping into this category, we all know it’s super tough and super competitive and the other guys have probably done thousands of kilometres around lots of other tracks,” said Slade.

“I’ve had the opportunity to test at Winton (when driving in the Fujitsu Series) and at Queensland Raceway, so I’ve done the most amount of kilometres here compared to other tracks.

“I feel comfortable around here. Wes (McDougall, race engineer) and myself understand the car quite well around here and we’ve got a pretty good playbook to work from.

“We all know that set-up is super crucial, and I feel as though we’re on top of it here more than other tracks.”